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| Under all the new paintings you will find now also abstracts. We are invited by the artist Peter Stilton to lean back and enjoy this different world or universe, in which he expresses his life changing and overwhelming experiences. This changes find their perfect language now in his "abstract" paintings. Read how this evolution has taken place from the artist himself. | |
While it would seem that my work has changed dramatically, in fact it is a way of working that really began long ago, when I was influenced as a young artist by abstract expressionism. But before I address the abstract work of the last four years, let me attempt to define this term. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 5 th edition, states that “abstraction” is “a withdrawal from worldly objects….a visionary notion”. A definition of “abstract” is “expressing a quality apart from any object”. .....read more..... |
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Category: African When I was young, my great aunt and uncle built a rubber plantation in Liberia. They brought back to the family farm in Maine great wooden trunks filled with spears, masks, kenta cloths, and many wonderful objects from Africa. Later, when my family would spend summers at “the farm”, my sister and I took afternoon naps in beautiful woven fiber tasseled hammocks we hung between pines. Thus, my adoration and discovery of Maine was inextricably intertwined with African textiles and carved wooden images. In Paris, we discovered Ibu Tall at the market, who understood immediately my love for the art he brings out of Africa, and we have collected some esthetically superb pieces from him. The paintings reflect all the things I have seen in museums and private collections from Africa, which have such presence and directness. |
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Category: Ali Gator The alligator paintings feature these Florida denizens in local and exotic habitats. They enjoy playing Dixieland in the deep swamps or at the beach, riding unicycles, singing opera…. Since this is a new series, it's difficult to tell what they will get up to! |
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Category: American Indian The first painting in this series is entitled "Voices of My Iroquois Ancestors". It came into being just before Easter 2004, a few months after my mother, Elizabeth Fuller, had passed on. I had been inspired to paint two versions of “The Descent from the Cross” in a tenebristic palette recalling Rembrandt. The gold leaf, dramatic sky, and the figures somehow led to an entirely abstract piece so elemental that it amazed me. Deep blues of the sea and sky contrasted with sand, clay, and embers of a log fire. Or was it the “glory hole” that the glassmaker uses to melt the mass of glass before it takes shape? The painting emerged as one of the most direct paintings I had produced as a mature artist. A series soon followed “Voices,” and the inspiration seemed to emanate from my association with New York State’s Finger Lakes region. In fact, a several times great grandmother came from that area. She was of the Cayuga nation of the Iroquois, and married an ancestor from Scotland who had fought on the American side in the Revolution. Generations later, my grandfather, Chester T. Fuller, was kidnapped by his mother, Nellie Simmons (a sharpshooter in the circus and known as the “Annie Oakley of the South). Nellie was a descendent of Mary Jane Palmer McEachron, the Cayuga Indian. In any event, my grandfather was raised in Clarksville, Tennessee, where as a boy he hunted for Indian artifacts and studied Indian lore. After returning to New York State to be reunited with his father, he later passed his love of nature and the Indian culture to my mother, who in turn fostered my appreciation of this heritage. The paintings are a tribute to her deep relationship to a world not of this time, but earlier and very close to the natural rhythms of nature. |
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Category: Aquatic Through fundraising efforts with the Florida Aquarium, I began a series of paintings featuring seahorses giving and attending chamber concerts, along with fish and other sea creatures. When I take the children to the aquarium we watch the inhabitants of a watery world, fascinated. The paintings, often fantastical in nature, sometimes calm and serene, could convey the world the composer St. Saens gives to “the whale” in “Carnival of the Animals.” Gold, silver, and variegated metallic leaf often enhances a Stilton underwater world. This subject area led to painting a life size manatee, “Cosmic Endurance of a Manatee,” and a large canvas called “Florida Room” on display at Tampa’s International Airport (see Floridaoutdoorartsfoundation.com). |
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Category: Architectural Architecture is a prime focus for both the artist and his wife. Stilton constantly incorporates architectural "memorabilia" from travels and perusals of medieval illustrated manuscripts. Ancient Greece, Rome, medieval Paris, 18th and 19th Century coastal Maine… "all the world's a stage" for his royal card figures, alligators, carousel animals, and other creations. |
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Category: Beds The bed series began with the sliding glass door in the Stilton's master bedroom, which overlooks the garden. What a wonderful experience to wake up almost in the garden! At dusk, the crystal chandelier is reflected in the glass, while the great palms, statues and boxwood-lined paths beckon toward pleasant dreams. The bed is a place of repose and quiet: a fortress from which to contemplate the natural world of moon and stars, orange blossoms and whippoorwills. |
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Category: Biblical Biblical paintings are the most difficult for the artist to do, because the inspiration must be very specific. They start with an insight to a biblical text and slowly take form in the artist's consciousness. Since a literal interpretation is not what Stilton desires, it must enter a spiritualized world that is strikingly contemporary but reflects his extensive study of Christian iconography in mosaics and manuscript illustrations. |
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Category: Carousel Animals Stilton has been in love with circus motifs ever since childhood. His great-great aunt Nellie Simmons was known as the "Annie Oakley of the South", a sharpshooter in the circus. These stylized wooden figures become a vehicle for many colorful musings, especially when they become mobile on wheels. |
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Category: Chairs The chairs are really "stand-ins" for people. They become actors in a play. Most of them are from the 18th century: a few predate, a few extend into the early 19th century. The reason is because the arabesque, or s-curve, or "line of beauty" dominated the rococo. They are Stilton's way of introducing the human into the abstract world of his prismatic painting. Although they often exist in interior settings, they are sometimes encountered hanging from the sky or between the towers of St. Mark's in Venice. |
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Category: Chess Although I have not played chess for several decades, the game and chess pieces symbolize history, deliberate thinking and strategy, and a “journey.” The board itself fascinates in order and perspective, the rook is a tower advancing or besieged, the knight a noble steed, the pawns yeomen and peasants, the bishops conniving as Colbert, the queen as illusive and royal as Guinevere, and the king powerful yet bound to play out his peculiar hand. Because the chess pieces are columnar, I see them as part of an architectural structure, set against sunset skies and inky panoramas studded with diamond flashing stars. An element of Lewis Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" often enters into the paintings as well. |
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Category: Family Family is one of the most basic and spiritual aspects of our existence. Now that we have two children, in addition to the Great Danes, they have entered into the paintings in ways most mysterious and wondrous. One cold winter day in Paris, Jill and I had toured the Picasso Museum and were very disappointed with the collection. I noted that the best paintings were the ones in which the artist had depicted his children. As we were enjoying an exquisitely familial French country stew in the warmth of a small brasserie on the Rue de Rivoli, I mused, “what will happen to my paintings if we were to have children?” Now I know: it has brought me full circle, and it’s like going around a second time. Everything I knew as a child comes back vividly, and it unlocks a deeper dimension to everything I’ve learned and cherished. This category will grow along with the Matthew and Philip, I’m certain. |
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Category: Floral When working as a set designer at Eisenhower College, the director told Peter Stilton that the only things that must be real on the stage are flowers. It is from the studio garden that the colors flow onto his canvases and watercolor paper pieces. Lilacs blooming along the south side of Notre Dame or along a lake in Sweden can "color" a series of paintings in blue-purple tints. But sometimes the flower itself becomes the focus. Only color and line then speak eloquently. |
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Category: Garden The garden, while outside the French doors of the studio, is really in the artist's heart. Around the baroque urn with rams' heads and swags circle 100 year old limestone statues of shepherds and shepherdesses, and mythological figures in rococo dress. The warm seasons of Florida, the "land of flowers", bring a succession of brilliant colors, fragrances and delight. It is always "in the wings" of Stilton's theatre. |
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Category: Gasparilla Paintings based on a century old festival in Tampa, Florida in which a fleet of pirates takes over the city for one day. Area businessmen dress as pirates and raid the city. Following this event is an annual parade along Bayshore Blvd. The series started in 1993 when Peter was commissioned to do the official image for the 1993 Gasparilla Pirate Fest. The Event Makers company which co-ordinates the event every year also did limited edition prints and posters that year. |
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Category: Greco Roman, Byzantine, and Medieval Early Greek philosophy and classical drama were a formative force during my high school and college years. As a student of western history, I grasped the foundation stones of our civilization and marveled at the “essences” that permeated some 2,000 years. Pompeii left me breathless. I will never forget, in detail, Delphi. Olympia was a reverie of rustling oak leaves in darkly varnished liquid sunshine. My first look at the Aegean was confirmation that this indeed was where all blue came from. Elements from these historical periods enter the abstract paintings in the most curious ways, such as “Pompeian Dithyrambs in Paris”, and “Limoges Reliquaries in New Orleans”, or “Baltic Tales of Byzantium”. |
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Category: Historical/Mythological Because of his undergraduate degree in history and graduate degree in art history, Stilton often focuses on both the historic and mythological in his paintings. Sometimes it combines both in paintings of medieval Paris rooted in Roman Lutetia, as when Apollo in his chariot rises over the pantheon or Bacchus appears in conjunction with Paris landmarks. Also, these motifs assume humorous aspects, such as the First Grand Piano Race in the First Olympiad and, or of the royal card games and jacks re-enacting the Trojan war. |
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Category: Horses To Peter Stilton, the horse is an archetypical symbol found in the oldest pictorial art in the world. Thus, most of the paintings of horses refer to historical contexts and themes. Alexander's horse Bucephalus, the four horses of San Marco, Apollo's horse-drawn chariot, etc. strengths, movement, power, mobility are equine characteristics which appealed to the artist. |
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Category: Interior The fascination with interiors is the artist's desire to create the rooms of "many mansions". The rectangular format of the painting lends itself to a room "where none may enter" yet "all may see". It provides a place for expressive coloristic atmospheres, a style, a sense of home. These rooms are as much in the heart of the artist as in the garden. |
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Category: Landscapes In earlier work in Maine, Ohio, New York, and California most of Stilton's paintings were landscapes. From childhood, the artist had expressed a Wordsworthian reverence for natural beauty and phenomena. Even today, his palette is strongly flavored by his geographical and climatic surroundings. The reflective landscapes often involve mountains, rivers, lakes, and streams. |
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Category: Mathematical and Geometric Totally abstract and non-figurative, these compositions are based on relatively uniform grids, creating squares and/or rectangles. Thus, the linear predominates. Color and often the placement of metallic leaf-gold, silver, or copper create a rhythmical counterpoint to the line and rectilinear shapes. The overall effect is one of symmetry, calm, and order. The excitement is produced by the activity within the “boxes” or “windows” rather than the interrelationship of the “squares” themselves. Many paintings in this series include in the title “blue emerald,” as the first twenty or more works were based on the mythical stone that reflects the sky color at dusk, just before darkness. |
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Category: Musical When I hear live performances that are particularly inspiring, I tend to see the music in colors and abstract kinetic compositions. Because the music exists in “time,” there are many “pictures” within the larger context; for example the movements of a symphony have smaller “pieces” or passages that stand out to me. The vivacity, elegance, and style of the pianist, the harpist, the flutist…fills me with inspiration and hundreds of mind pictures. Sometimes I experience “heaven on earth” in the concert hall or in churches such as St. Sulpice in Paris, where the organ reverberates for almost 30 seconds. The double choir there transported me to the heights of esthetic and spiritual fulfillment. I am compelled to translate these experiences into paint—whether the music is Faure or Duruflay’s requiems or improvisational jazz. |
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Category: Paris Peter Stilton wrote a poem that begins, "I walk in Paris in my mind / Never knowing what I'll find…" It goes on to explain the juxtaposition of images, from light shining through the stained glass windows of St. Severin onto the rectangular stones of the floor, the incandescence of the Eiffel Tower at night, the moving steps in the metro tunnels, the symphonic surprise of a patisserie window…. Paris speaks from felt and visible Roman Lutetia to the present palpability of Paris today. Paris is in the heart of the artist as he is also in the heart of Paris. |
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Category: Piano In Stilton's studio, there is a three-manual organ and a piano from the early 20th century. Music is as much a part of the studio as the painting and the poetry. So it is only logical that the grand pianos should begin somewhere in the artist's work. The place was Glastonbury, Connecticut, as the artist's friends' son Ben played Chopin on the restored Steinway while Stilton painted in his mother's iris garden. The pianos then appeared as part of the mythological past, posing as ships for Ulysses' return to Ithaca, or as chariots in the first Olympic games. They end up on the Lido in Venice, in the woods of Maine. They are another dimension of "the chairs" (musical chairs?). |
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Category: Prehistoric and Ancient Cultures Whereas in the past I deliberately tried to evoke a particular culture or historical period, I attempted with the first “Blue Emerald “paintings to invent undecipherable symbols, marks, and configurations that would suggest the mystery of lost civilizations. Although these paintings are distinctly contemporary in feeling, they are probably the epitome of western romanticism. Because no records exist to shed light on early civilizations, my evocative “pictographs” conjure up something akin to an unknown time which the composer Stravinsky evoked in his “Rite of Spring”. |
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Category: Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo Open the door, and step inside Brunelleschi’s San Lorenzo, with its perfect cube module, into St. Peter’s with its vastness; enter the garden with 1,000 fountains at the Villa d’Este; glide down the canals of Byzantine and Baroque Venice; walk into a fete galante in the paintings of Watteau and Fragonard. I’ve given you a glimpse of the way my mind works, using these experiences like children use wooden blocks to “build”. One image leads to another, and that in turn to another, making mental time travel possible—eradicating barriers that would separate one time period from another. So the “Blue Emerald” appears “incognito” in Venice and the golden section (proportion of beauty) so favored by Renaissance artists like Piero Della Francesca appears in most of the paintings. The leading published authority on Pythagoras’ golden section wrote in the gallery guestbook in Paris: “This artist…uses the golden section”. I was stunned. Intuitively, Renaissance principles enter my work; yet the sprezzatura and value contrast of the baroque are the foundations of my paintings. And the delicacy and refinement of the rococo is often found, as well. There is a quest for beauty, and harmony and elegance are essentials in my work. |
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Category: Royals The royal card images in various settings and activities are the direct result of the artist's study of the painted faces found in 13th century French and English stained glass. Those faces were repeated through the centuries on playing cards. To think that they began in cathedrals and ended up in Las Vegas! It is perhaps the most playful of the series - and, yes, perhaps one step beyond the chairs into the human world of thought and emotion. |
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Category: The Sea Whenever the artist needs to "cleanse his palette", he bolts for the sea. In the last five decades, that has been the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic off the Maine coast: one turquoise-green, the other deep emerald and sapphire. Even in the garden, the palms whisper of the surf and swells which the artist hears in his heart. While the sea rarely makes an appearance as the sole subject, like Debussy's "La Mer", it silently slips into almost every series. |
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Category: Venice Venice is unique because of its liquid setting, where Byzantine domes and late Gothic palazzos dematerialize in a multicolored mist. The artist's focus in Venice has always been St. Mark's: the four horses, the Palo d'Oro. It is the pageant that Shakespeare writes of at the end of "The Tempest", and it ebbs and flows in the recesses of the artist's mind: in broken tesserae, marble, molten glass and gold. |
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Category: Wheels Wheels are mobility, for going to "shores" hitherto unknown. When we were children, the tricycle gave us wings - then the bicycle, then the car... In cinema, movement is part of the craft. So wheeled carousel animals, pianos and ships move like salt cellars across medieval tables. The wheels take us, like Pegasus, to new worlds. |
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